The climate crisis is the latest in a long line of predictions about how bad things are going to be in the future. Let’s remember that while scary headlines sell newspapers, journalists have a terrible track record.

Activists & journalists insist that Canada’s climate policies have destroyed our international good name. But survey results released yesterday indicate – for the 3rd consecutive year – that we have “the world’s best reputation.”

In 2007 the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world was at a defining moment, that the next 2 to 3 years would determine our future. Without a new emissions treaty by 2012, he said, it would be too late.

In 2008, the United Nations Environment Programme published a map suggesting there’d be 50 million climate refugees by 2010. When a writer called attention to this failed prediction recently, the map disappeared.

Before the IPCC was even founded, the Worldwatch Institute had already declared that global warming was caused by fossil fuels. Surely that makes the IPCC chairman’s decision to fraternize with this activist organization a bit awkward.

In the world inhabited by this environmental crusader, climate change is “a crisis that’s breaking over our heads at this moment,” ExxonMobil peddles petroleum the way drug dealers peddle heroin, and we “have no choice” but to turn our backs on fossil fuels.

Possessing scholarly expertise is one thing. Being able to predict the future is another matter entirely. Future Babble is a book that explores the question of why expert predictions fail – and why we believe them anyway.

It isn’t your imagination. We were advised that global warming would mean milder winters. The record-breaking cold temperatures & unusual snowfalls in recent years are odds with the claim that global warming is happening faster than predicted.

News reports from the 1970s said ocean temperatures were dropping, polar ice was growing, and the coldest temperatures in 200 years were being recorded at the Arctic Circle. We were told be worried. Very worried.

No matter what the concern, drama queen scientists have been pushing the same solution for decades: less consumption, less travel & less freedom. For them, every problem is a crisis that requires radical social change.

Al Gore said global warming caused Hurricane Katrina and that hurricanes were going to get worse. This gave insurance companies an excuse to increase premiums by tens of billions. How embarrassing that US hurricane damage has since fallen to less than half the historical average.

Perhaps those who lost their properties because they could no longer afford to insure them will forgive & forget.

Journalists said Toronto’s mayoral race was too close to call. In fact, a winner was declared eight minutes after the polls closed. So go ahead, take their word for it when they tell you about global warming.

People are surprised to learn that eco icon David Suzuki (who insists there are too many humans on the planet), has himself fathered five children. But his autobiography reveals this to be the case. It also tells us he began dating his second wife when she was 22 – and he was 35.

Back in 1969, smart people made some predictions regarding the effect carbon dioxide emissions would have on the climate by the year 2000. A 7-degree F increase in temperature and 10-foot sea level rises were among them. As usual, the predictions were wrong.

A few weeks before the IPCC admitted its Himalayan glacier predictions were dead wrong, Time magazine profiled the glacier expert at the center of the storm. Rather than being hard-nosed & rigorous, the magazine fell for him hook, line & sinker.

The Ecologist magazine declared in its first editorial that humans are parasites, an infection, and a disease on planet Earth. We are “waste products” that long ago “ceased to play a useful ecological role.” Written by the “Godfather of Green,” this editorial is emphatically anti-humanitarian in its outlook. The Ecologist claims to have set “the environmental agenda since 1970.”

Certain ideas resurface again & again throughout human history. One of these is the notion that our world is on the brink of collapse. Revisiting news reports about the Y2K computer bug prior to the turn of the century provides an excellent reminder of how the media hypes all sorts of scare stories.

30+ years ago, we were told humanity faced “global disaster” and “worldwide catastrophe” if we didn’t radically change our lifestyles. That message now gets linked to global warming, but the analysis – and the fear mongering – is much older.

A book published in the 1970s argued passionately that society couldn’t afford to ignore the danger posed by global cooling. The evidence was too strong, it said – and scientists who disagreed were being irresponsible. Sound familiar?

Bernie Goldberg worked on news shows for 28 years at CBS television. His book has illuminating things to say about purported investigative news programs & other topics. “Scaring the hell out of people makes for good television,” he writes, “even when it makes for shallow journalism.”

Exploring a long list of highly questionable media scare stories, Goldberg reminds us that, in 1987, Oprah Winfrey told her viewers 1 in 5 American heterosexuals would be dead from AIDS within 3 years.